Mudhoney/Strapping Fieldhands-Porn 3 7" (1995)

Artist: Mudhoney/Strapping Fieldhands

Title: Porn 3

Label: Amphetamine Reptile

Format:  7"

Cat #: SCALE 76

Year of Release: 1995

Country and Year of Edition Issue: US 1995 From the Documentary Film "Porn" Series 3 of 4

Sold Price: $6.99

Listed Condition: VG+/VG+

Sell Date: 9/24/20

Discogs Last Sold:  6/21/20 $5.00 NM/VG+

Low: $2.00

Median: $6.20

High: $8.22

Current low price: $6.49

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 9

Have/Want: 281/110

Where Sold: Pleasanton, CA

Time it took to sell: 4 years

Where and When Bought: NYC either Other Music or Kim's on St. Marks, new around $5-6

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: A-

Sad To See It Go?: No

Good to hear this great Mudhoney track from the mid-90's that I forgot about but remembered straight away.  The Strapping Fieldhands flip is a bit of forgettable ambient noise.  I was playing their album with the red cover on WFDU regularly in 1994 (I had to look it up, In The Pineys was it's name).  It's label, Siltbreeze, was definitely one that I held in high regard. A quarter of a century later sometimes your B-list holds up, sometimes it fades with the dust of time.

One memory that doesn't fade is the memory of Al Goldstein, the Screw publisher who this soundtrack series evolved into the retitled Screwed movie in 1996 whose soundtrack cd was immediately available used for $5 on St. Marks (I'm certain Venus) and I snapped it up without a second thought.  I actually went to see this at Cinema Village with a friend that was visiting from out of town the one week it ran in NYC.   He was a right winger theologist that wasn't impressed.   The movie wasn't on the level of Screw TV which aired on public access in it's low-fi glory.  It's highlight was Al Goldstein's Fuck You Of The Week, where Al would eviscerate some local vendor or person at length for some sort of indiscretion.  The subject of this one-man kangaroo court is always guilty and gets their sentence at the end: an extended middle finger and Goldstein's gleeful "FUCK YOU!"

The soundtrack had some other highlights that emerged throughout the 7" series the year prior when Screwed had the working name of Porn splashed across these covers.  My favorite, which I bought in the single series,  was Halo of Kitten's "I Hate Porn." A hybrid of Free Kitten and Halo Of Flies.  Julia Cafritz and Tom Hazelmyer were personal aesthetic deities to me in the mid to late 80's.  I think the characters of the noise rock underground made it what it was beyond the music.  But had I known nothing about either, I would never forget this public service announcement.  Moralist noise rock! Whoda thunk???

At the end of the day the strong character at the top separates the wheat from the chaff, whether hero or villain.  This is true in pornography and rock and roll.  It is why people remembered Penthouse or Screw or even Playboy in a pile of also rans.  AmRep was the same way in the world of Noise Rock.  This, to me, was why it made sense for AmRep to take this project on: it had artists that could handle the theme and a subject figurehead that could stand out.  AmReps bands had characters like Shannon Selberg or Mike Hard in a genre that could easily be buried in anonymity.  That the movie fell a little flat didn't matter, the concept made perfect sense.